China: Defense Minister Li Shangfu fired, missing for two months
Change at the helm of the Ministry of Defense of the People's Republic of China. Li Shangfu 's removal as China's defense minister on Tuesday marked the end of a four-decade career for the aerospace expert who contributed to the country's ambitious space program.
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislative body, announced the decision at the end of a five-day meeting, after Li had disappeared from the public eye for more than two months.
On Tuesday he was also removed from the position of state councilor and expelled from the Central Military Commission. So, to put it in Italian, it was completely torpedoed and sunk.
Li, 65, was a pillar of China's aerospace program before being named defense minister in March, making headlines as the country's first defense minister to land on the US sanctions list.
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Born in Sichuan in 1958, Li is originally from Jiangxi province in eastern China. His father, Li Shaozhu, was a Red Army veteran and former high-ranking officer in the People's Liberation Army Railway Force. The late Li Shaozhu was famous for rebuilding logistics railways during the Civil War and Korean War.
Li Shangfu joined the PLA in 1978, when he enrolled at the National University of Defense Technology. Soon after graduation in 1982, Li joined the Xichang Satellite Launch Center as a technician.
He became director of the center in 2003 and oversaw it until it became the flagship of China's space program. In 2007, he was responsible for the Chang'e 1 mission, the launch of China's first uncrewed spacecraft to orbit the Moon.
During his decade-long tenure as the center's director, Li oversaw numerous rocket launches, including the Chang'e 2 lunar probe in 2010.
In an interview with state broadcaster CCTV in 2010, Li said his dream was to continue doing his job for another eight years and carry out 100 more rocket launches before retiring. In 2013 he took a further step forward and became head of staff of the arms procurement department. In 2017 he became head of the department for the purchase of armaments, a position he will hold until 2022. In the meantime, he continued to deal with Chinese space programs, it must be said successfully.
Li has also forged closer military ties with Russia, with two visits to Moscow and three meetings with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, in six months. They pledged to deepen military cooperation despite growing pressure from the US-led West over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Li also visited Belarus in August.
In June, he led a Chinese delegation to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where he met his Singaporean counterpart Ng Eng Hen and senior defense officials from Japan, Korea and Germany. But he did not officially meet with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and refused a sideline meeting with the Pentagon chief at the conference.
Li was last seen in public in late August, when he attended a China-Africa security forum in Beijing. Since then he has never appeared in public again. It remains a mystery why.
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The article China: Defense Minister Li Shangfu fired, missing for two months, comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/cina-silurato-il-ministro-della-difesa-li-shangfu-scomparso-da-due-mesi2/ on Tue, 24 Oct 2023 19:43:09 +0000.